“People often tell me I don’t look like a maid,” she tells me. “And they genuinely believe that is a compliment.”

Lata Sonawane’s tone is confident. Not many of her peers can communicate with such ease. Nine times out of 10, you will hear her laugh before seeing her svelte frame wrapped in a neatly wrapped sari. She greets me with this same guileless laugh as she wonders why I would be interested in knowing about a widowed mother of two whose work includes hand-washing other people’s underwear. I tell her she comes across as a remarkable person and wants to know more about her. Her eyebrows betray the slightest hint of surprise before she gives into a fit of laughter and sits back. 

Lata’s husband, a long-distance truck driver, passed away in a road accident 12 years earlier, when her son was five and her daughter two. She steeled herself to earn after favors from family and friends ultimately dried out. Her first job was at a vada pav stall, but she quit after the owner withheld half her payment on flimsy grounds. She started working as a maid at several households and gradually took it up full-time.

When Lata adjusts the pleats of her pallu, I ask if she could teach me to drape a sari that smartly. “I’ll do it now!” she chirps, and her hands gesticulate wildly as she explains what it takes is the efficient use of two fingers to make the perfect pleats for my non-existent sari. 

I noticed her nose was pierced, but she wore no jewelry. “Widows in my community do not wear nose pins,” she explains. She catches my eyes dart towards her peach bangles when she says, “You’d know well that men can’t be trusted. At least some leave you alone if they notice marital signs on your body.” She grins as she slices back a stray hair onto her tight bun. 

As a spiffy 38-year-old, she has got used to drawing attention. “It’s the way of the world,” she says while circling her bangle with her index finger. One of her employers, who was shirtless, grabbed her hand when his wife was not home. He told her she was too young to be a widow and that she had a pretty face. “I threw muddy mop water on him and said, “Move, I need to clean the dirt.” She quit the next day and chose not to tell her why what had happened a day earlier. “Why,” I asked her, and she shrugged. Then she added, in a low voice, “Kisi aur ka ghar kyon todna.” (Why would I want to break up someone’s home?)

She waves an enthusiastic hello to a passerby and asks after him. This happened multiple times during our interview. She talks to each person with an innate warmth and genuine curiosity. 

“Did you ever love again?” I ask her. She covers her face with her hands and giggles a yes. A few years ago, she ran into a neighbor in Savarde, her native village in the Chiplun district of Maharashtra. He was nine years younger and worked at a local sweet shop. The attraction was instant from both ends. They would talk for hours on the phone and meet whenever she visited. “He made me feel young and alive,” she says with gleaming eyes. “It felt like I was living an extended dream I did not deserve.” 

Once, she borrowed a knee-length black dress from a woman she worked for and requested her to click photos. She sent the photos to him and asked how he liked them. “You look like a cheap prostitute,” he said and hung up.

Her son drops by, and they exchange a few words in Marathi. She comes back beaming and tells me she borrowed money from a few people to enroll him at an industrial training institute so he could finish school and learn a skill. “He says he will get a job soon,” she says, “and I can finally stop working.” She starts picking at her bangle again, adding, “I want to take things easy, but I also like to keep busy. Let’s see, maybe I’ll run a small eatery or open a tailoring shop. A didi I work for tells me I need to be my own boss - it might be worth trying.” 

I tell her she is a boss, and her eyes scrunch as she claps her hands in glee. She says I can come over any time to try her mutton curry. “It’s famous in the whole neighborhood; I cook for 100 odd people after Shravan ends,” she boasts. 

As I took my leave, I asked her how it had ended with the guy from her hometown. “Oh, he got married long ago. I danced like no one’s business at his wedding,” she says as she breaks into peals of laughter.